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A decade or so ago, we had an ice storm take out power for much of the town for five days. Because the copper pair was still intact and powered by the central
by thyrsus 3y ago
A decade or so ago, we had an ice storm take out power for much of the town for five days. Because the copper pair was still intact and powered by the central office, we never lost phone service.
This week, after heavy rain, the copper lines, which one technician said had cheap paper insulation, stopped working. A different technician got outgoing calls working again, but incoming calls (the higher voltage ring signal) were still failing, and AT&T told their technician not to fix it. We were forced to transfer our service to fiber, which was already present for internet. The AT&T fiber router can drive our existing handsets, with replacement crawlspace wiring reasonably priced.
My UPS lasts 90 minutes, nowhere near five days. Sometime over the next year, I'll probably get a Generac attached to our gas line - the tree canopy makes solar impractical.
I'm lucky that I can afford these worse alternatives. Many can't.
Enshittification is seeping into the physical layer.
- voidwtf 3y agoEnshittification? The original delivery mechanism, copper, was convenient to carry electricity over. However, copper has high maintenance costs due to moisture intrusion, breakages, and signal degradation. It also has theoretical upper bound on bandwidth. In many locations the copper may never even make it to the CO anymore and may be served by a pedestal with fiber and a small battery backup. Is replacing the deteriorating, limited, copper infrastructure really enshitification? I expect telecommunications, not power deliver, personally.
- crote 3y agoKeep in mind that many gas lines require electricity to operate. There are plenty of pumps and control stations along the line, after all. If you want to have electricity during a multi-day regional power outage, your best bet is a generator fueled by a propane tank, or some kind of long-life gasoline.